Preparations Continue

37 days now until departure.  We continue to prepare for the Alaska trip and simultaneously for the 2nd phase of our travels this summer.  I got the car's transmission serviced yesterday and purchased a number of the supplies I needed to make minor repairs on the travel trailer.

I should back up a bit and give everyone the bigger picture here.  As some of you will recall we were expecting to house sit for some folks back in Arkansas for the next 18 months.  That was our Plan A for 2018 and into 2019.  Sadly that adventure fell through as one of the prospective missionaries had a major health issue which has prevented them from going on the mission.  Thus our house sitting services were not required. We had a long lead time waiting for the mission to be finalized and we tried not to get too excited about the move to Arkansas until we actually knew it was going to happen.  However, Debra and I both became quite invested in that trip and were making all kinds of plans in our heads as to what we would do and where we would go while we lived there.  The missionaries were planning to leave on March 9th and I had said we wouldn't finalize our plans until at least March 1st just in case something came up.  Well on February 28th we got the call from the missionaries saying their mission had be put on indefinite hold due to a health issue.  Since that time it has been determined that they will not be able to serve the mission until extensive treatment is completed and it is highly likely that they will not go at all.

By the time that the Arkansas move was cancelled we had already notified our landlady that we were moving at the end of this lease and she had made plans to sell the townhouse.  We could have probably gone back to her and said we wanted to stay and she would have leased it to us for another year.  But at that point we decided that we wanted to hit the road anyway while our health is still reasonably good and we have the means and motivation to see the rest of the U.S.  So Plan B was now in effect.

Plan B has several phases to it.  Phase 1 is the Alaska trip.  Neither Debra nor I have been to Alaska and I have been hoping, planning, wishing to go for quite a few years.  At one time I had hoped to have all 50 states visited by the time I turned 50 but Alaska just never worked out.  So for the last 16+ years I've been looking at various options to visit Alaska and take in the "Last Frontier".  Yes, I watch many of the Alaska themed TV shows and really enjoy the scenery and the lifestyle of those who choose the subsistence way of life in Alaska. So when the Arkansas move fell through we made the decision to hit the road starting with this trip to Alaska.

We are in the process of moving everything out of our current home and into a storage unit.  We have 20 X 20 storage unit about a mile from here and we have been busy packing up the house and moving our stuff little by little in the unit.  We expect to be out of here by the 26th of May and we will be living in our trailer for about a week before we hit the road to Alaska.

The Alaska trip will last from June 2nd to about June 21 but when we return we will be homeless and need to find another place to live.  Since we will initially be living in our trailer we decided that we might as well go visit our kids down south and then swing up to New England for the Fall foliage in late September or early October.  I've been to all the New England states but Debra still has several of them to visit and we love the Fall colors.  So Phase 2 this year is the cross country trip in our travel trailer.  Once we return from Alaska we will spend a week or two here in Utah recuperating from Alaska and then we will head out on the road to Arkansas to spend some time with our son Anthony and his family.  We know we can make that drive in 2 days by car but with our trailer in tow we plan to take our time and perhaps stop off along the way.  We will probably be taking about 5 days to get there depending on how worn out I am from the Alaska trip.

I will continue this tomorrow as it is getting quite lengthy.  I now need to find out how to share this with our friends and family so that you can start checking it out and let me know who is interested in it.